“Not that I mean any unkindness to you, Ellen,” the doleful Tadman added apologetically, “for you’ve been a good friend to me, and if there’s one merit I can lay claim to, it’s a grateful heart; but of course, when a man marries, he never is the same to his relations as when he was single. It isn’t in human nature that he should be.”
Here Mrs. Tadman’s amiable kinsman requested her to hold her jaw, and to bring the board if she was going to play, or to say as much if she wasn’t. Urged by this gentle reminder, Mrs. Tadman immediately produced a somewhat dingy-looking pack of cards and a queer little old-fashioned cribbage-board.
The game lasted for about an hour or so, at the end of which time the farmer threw himself back in his chair with a yawn, and pronounced that he had had enough of it. The old eight-day clock in the lobby struck ten soon after this, and the two women rose to retire, leaving Stephen to his night’s libations, and not sorry to escape out of the room, which he had converted into a kind of oven or Turkish bath by means of the roaring fire he had insisted upon keeping up all the evening. He was left, therefore, with his bottle of rum about half emptied, to finish his night’s entertainment after his own fashion.
Mrs. Tadman ventured a mild warning about the fire when she wished him good night; but as she did not dare to hint that there had been any neglect in the chimney-sweeping, her counsel went for very little. Mr. Whitelaw threw on another pine-log directly the two women had left him, and addressed himself to the consumption of a fresh glass of rum-and-water.
“There’s nothing like being on the safe side,” he muttered to himself with an air of profound wisdom. “I don’t want to be laid up with the rheumatics, if I can help it.”
He finished the contents of his glass, and went softly out of the room, carrying a candle with him. He was absent about ten minutes, and then came back to resume his comfortable seat by the fire, and mixed himself another glass of grog with the air of a man who was likely to finish the bottle.
While he sat drinking in his slow sensual way, his young wife slept peacefully enough in one of the rooms above him. Early rising and industrious habits will bring sleep, even when the heart is hopeless and the mind is weary. Mrs. Whitelaw slept a tranquil dreamless sleep to-night, while Mrs. Tadman snored with a healthy regularity in a room on the opposite side of the passage.
There was a faint glimmer of dawn in the sky, a cold wet dawn, when Ellen was awakened suddenly by a sound that bewildered and alarmed her. It was almost like the report of a pistol, she thought, as she sprang out of bed, pale and trembling. It was not a pistol shot, however, only a handful of gravel thrown sharply against her window.
“Stephen,” she cried, half awake and very much, frightened, “what was that?” But, to her surprise, she found that her husband was not in the room.
While she sat on the edge of her bed hurrying some of her clothes on, half mechanically, and wondering what that startling sound could have been, a sudden glow of red light shone in at her window, and at the same moment her senses, which had been only half awakened before, told her that there was an atmosphere of smoke in the room.
She rushed to the door, forgetting that to open it was perhaps to admit death, and flung it open. Yes, the passage was full of smoke, and there was a strange crackling sound below.
There could be little doubt as to what had happened — the house was on fire. She remembered how repeatedly Mrs. Tadman had declared that Stephen would inevitably set the place on fire some night or other, and how little weight she had attached to the dismal prophecy. But the matron’s fears had not been groundless, it seemed. The threatened calamity had come.
“Stephen!” she cried, with all her might, and then flew to Mrs. Tadman’s door and knocked violently. She waited for no answer, but rushed on to the room where the two women-servants slept together, and called to them loudly to get up for their lives, the house was on fire.
There were still the men in the story above to be awakened, and the smoke was every moment growing thicker. She mounted a few steps of the staircase, and called with all her strength. It was very near their time for stirring. They must hear her, surely. Suddenly she remembered an old disused alarm-bell which hung in the roof. She had seen the frayed rope belonging to it hanging in an angle of the passage. She flew to this, and pulled it vigorously till a shrill peal rang out above; and once having accomplished this, she went on, reckless of her own safety, thinking only how many there were to be saved in that house.
All this time there was no sign of her husband, and a dull horror came over her with the thought that he might be perishing miserably below. There could be no doubt that the fire came from downstairs. That crackling noise had increased, and every now and then there came a sound like the breaking of glass. The red glow shining in at the front windows grew deeper and brighter. The fire had begun in the parlour, of course, where they had left Stephen Whitelaw basking in the warmth of his resinous pine-logs.
Ellen was still ringing the bell, when she heard a man’s footstep coming along the passage towards her. It was not her husband, but one of the farm-servants from the upper story, an honest broad-shouldered fellow, as strong as Hercules.
“Lord a mercy, mum, be that you?” he cried, as he recognised the white half-dressed figure clinging to the bell-rope “let me get ‘ee out o’ this; the old place’ll burn like so much tinder;” and before she could object, he had taken her up in his arms as easily as if she had been a child, and was carrying her towards the principal staircase.
Here they were stopped. The flames and smoke were mounting from the lobby below; the man turned immediately, wasting no time by indecision, and ran to the stairs leading down to the kitchen. In this direction all was safe. There was smoke, but in a very modified degree.
“Robert,” Ellen cried eagerly, when they had reached the kitchen, where all was quiet, “for God’s sake, go and see what has become of your master. We left him drinking in the parlour last night. I’ve called to him again and again, but there’s been no answer.”
“Don’t you take on, mum; master’s all right, I daresay. Here be the gals and Mrs. Tadman coming downstairs; they’ll take care o’ you, while I go and look arter him. You’ve no call to be frightened. If the fire should come this way, you’ve only got to open yon door and get out into the yard. You’re safe here.”
The women were all huddled together in the kitchen by this time, half dressed, shivering, and frightened out of their wits. Ellen Whitelaw was the only one among them who displayed anything like calmness.
The men were all astir. One had run across the fields to Malsham to summon the fire-engine, another was gone to remove some animals stabled near the house.
The noise of burning wood was rapidly increasing, the smoke came creeping under the kitchen-door presently, and, five minutes after he had left them, the farm-servant came back to say that he could find no traces of his master. The parlor was in flames. If he had been surprised by the fire in his sleep, it must needs be all over with him. The man urged his mistress to get out of the house at once; the fire was gaining ground rapidly, and it was not likely that anything he or the other men could do would stop its progress.
The women left the kitchen immediately upon this warning, by a door leading into the yard. It was broad daylight by this time; a chilly sunless morning, and a high wind sweeping across the fields and fanning the flames, which now licked the front wall of Wyncomb Farmhouse. The total destruction of the place seemed inevitable, unless help from Malsham came very quickly. The farm servants were running to and fro with buckets of water from the yard, and flinging their contents in at the shattered windows of the front rooms; but this was a small means of checking the destruction. The house was old, built for the most part of wood, and there seemed little hope for it.
Ellen and the other women went round to the front of the house, and stood there, dismal figures in their scanty raiment, with woollen petticoats pinned across their shoulders, and disordered hair blown about their faces
by the damp wind. They stood grouped together in utter helplessness, looking at the work of ruin with a half-stupid air; almost like the animals who had been hustled from one place of shelter to another, and were evidently lost in wonder as to the cause of their removal.
But presently, as the awful scene before them grew more familiar, the instincts of self-interest arose in each breast. Mrs. Tadman piteously bewailed the loss of her entire wardrobe, and some mysterious pocket-book which she described plaintively as her “little all.” She dwelt dolefully upon the merits of each particular article, most especially upon a French-merino dress she had bought for Stephen’s wedding, which would have lasted her a lifetime, and a Paisley shawl, the gift of her deceased husband, which had been in her possession twenty years, and had not so much as a thin place in it.
Nor was the disconsolate matron the only one who lamented her losses. Sarah Batts, with clasped hands and distracted aspect, wept for the destruction of her “box.”
“There was money in it,” she cried, “money! Oh, don’t you think the men could get to my room and save it?”
“Money!” exclaimed Mrs. Tadman, sharply, aroused from the contemplation of her own woes by this avowal; “you must be cleverer than I took you for, Sarah Batts, to be able to save money, and yet be always bedizened with some new bit of finery, as you’ve been.”
“It was give to me,” Sarah answered indignantly, “by them as had a right to give it.”
“For no good, I should think,” replied Mrs. Tadman; “what should anybody give you money for?”
“Never you mind; it was mine. O dear, O dear! if one of the men would only get my box for me.”
She ran to intercept one of the farm-labourers, armed with his bucket, and tried to bribe him by the promise of five shillings as a reward for the rescue of her treasures. But the man only threatened to heave the bucket of water at her if she got in his way; and Miss Batts was obliged to abandon this hope.
The fire made rapid progress meanwhile, unchecked by that ineffectual splashing of water. It had begun at the eastern end of the building, the end most remote from those disused rooms in the ivy-covered west wing; but the wind was blowing from the north-east, and the flames were spreading rapidly towards that western angle. There was little chance that any part of the house could be saved.
While Ellen Whitelaw was looking on at the work of ruin, with a sense of utter helplessness, hearing the selfish lamentations of Mrs. Tadman and Sarah Batts like voices in a dream, she was suddenly aroused from this state of torpor by a loud groan, which sounded from not very far off. It came from behind her, from the direction of the poplars. She flew to the spot, and on the ground beneath one of them she found a helpless figure lying prostrate, with an awful smoke-blackened face — a figure and face which for some moments she did not recognize as her husband’s.
She knew him at last, however, and knelt down beside him. He was groaning in an agonized manner, and had evidently been fearfully burnt before he made his escape.
“Stephen!” she cried. “O, thank God you are here! I thought you were shut up in that burning house. I called with all my might, and the men searched for you.”
“It isn’t much to be thankful for,” gasped the farmer. “I don’t suppose there’s an hour’s life in me; I’m scorched from head to foot, and one arm’s helpless. I woke up all of a sudden, and found the room in a blaze. The flames had burst out of the great beam that goes across the chimney-piece. The place was all on fire, so that I couldn’t reach the door anyhow; and before I could get out of the window, I was burnt like this. You’d have been burnt alive in your bed but for me. I threw up a handful of gravel at your window. It must have woke you, didn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, that was the sound that woke me; it seemed like a pistol going off. You saved my life, Stephen. It was very good of you to remember me.”
“Yes; there’s men in my place who wouldn’t have thought of anybody but themselves.”
“Can I do anything to ease you, Stephen?” asked his wife.
She had seated herself on the grass beside him, and had taken his head on her lap, supporting him gently. She was shocked to see the change the fire had made in his face, which was all blistered and distorted.
“No, nothing; till they come to carry me away somewhere. I’m all one burning pain.”
His eyes closed, and he seemed to sink into a kind of stupor. Ellen called to one of the men. They might carry him to some place of shelter surely, at once, where a doctor could be summoned, and something done for his relief. There was a humble practitioner resident at Crosber, that is to say, about two miles from Wyncomb. One of the farm-servants might take a horse and gallop across the fields to fetch this man.
Robert Dunn, the bailiff, heard her cries presently and came to her. He was very much shocked by his master’s condition, and at once agreed to the necessity of summoning a surgeon. He proposed that they should carry Stephen Whitelaw to some stables, which lay at a safe distance from the burning house, and make up some kind of bed for him there. He ran back to dispatch one of the men to Crosber, and returned immediately with another to remove his master.
But when they tried to raise the injured man between them, he cried out to them to let him alone, they were murdering him. Let him lie where he was; he would not be moved. So he was allowed to lie there, with his head on his wife’s lap, and his tortured body covered by a coat, which one of the men brought him. His eyes closed again, and for some time he lay without the slightest motion.
The fire was gaining ground every instant, and there was yet no sign of the engine from Malsham; but Ellen Whitelaw scarcely heeded the work of destruction. She was thinking only of the helpless stricken creature lying with his head upon her lap; thinking of him perhaps in this hour of his extremity with all the more compassion, because he had always been obnoxious to her. She prayed for the rapid arrival of the surgeon, who must surely be able to give some relief to her husband’s sufferings, she thought. It seemed dreadful for him to be lying like this, with no attempt made to lessen his agony. After a long interval he lifted his scorched eyelids slowly, and looked at her with a strange dim gaze.
“The west wing,” he muttered; “is that burnt?”
“No, Stephen, not yet; but there’s little hope they’ll save any part of the house.”
“They must save that; the rest don’t matter — I’m insured heavily; but they must save the west wing.”
His wife concluded from this that he had kept some of his money in one of those western rooms. The seed-room perhaps, that mysterious padlocked chamber, where she had heard the footstep. And yet she had heard him say again and again that he never kept an unnecessary shilling in the house, and that every pound he had was out at interest. But such falsehoods and contradictions are common enough amongst men of miserly habits; and Stephen Whitelaw would hardly be so anxious about those western rooms unless something of value were hidden away there. He closed his eyes again, and lay groaning faintly for some time; then opened them suddenly with a frightened look and asked, in the same tone,
“The west wing — is the west wing afire yet?”
“The wind blows that way, Stephen, and the flames are spreading. I don’t think they could save it — not if the engine was to come this minute.”
“But I tell you they must!” cried Stephen Whitelaw. “If they don’t, it’ll be murder — cold-blooded murder. O, my God, I never thought there was much harm in the business — and it paid me well — but it’s weighed me down like a load of lead, and made me drink more to drown thought. But if it should come to this — don’t you understand? Don’t sit staring at me like that. If the fire gets to the west wing, it will be murder. There’s some one there — some one locked up — that won’t be able to stir unless they get her out.”
“Some one locked up in the west wing! Are you mad, Stephen?”
“It’s the truth. I wouldn’t do it again — no, not for twice the money. Let them get her out somehow. They can do it, if
they look sharp.”
That unforgotten footstep and equally unforgotten scream flashed into Mrs. Whitelaw’s mind with these words of her husband’s. Some one shut up there; yes, that was the solution of the mystery that had puzzled and tormented her so long. That cry of anguish was no supernatural echo of past suffering, but the despairing shriek of some victim of modern cruelty. A poor relation of Stephen’s perhaps — a helpless, mindless creature, whose infirmities had been thus hidden from the world. Such things have been too cruelly common in our fair free country.
Ellen laid her husband’s head gently down upon the grass and sprang to her feet.
“In which room?” she cried. But there was no answer. The man lay with closed eyes — dying perhaps — but she could do nothing for him till medical help came. The rescue of that unknown captive was a more urgent duty.
She was running towards the burning house, when she heard a horse galloping on the road leading from the gate. She stopped, hoping that this was the arrival of the doctor; but a familiar voice called to her, and in another minute her father had dismounted and was close at her side.
“Thank God you’re safe, lass!” he exclaimed, with some warmer touch of paternal feeling than he was accustomed to exhibit. “Our men saw the fire when they were going to their work, and I came across directly. Where’s Steph?”
“Under the trees yonder, very much hurt; I’m afraid fatally. But there’s nothing we can do for him till the doctor comes. There’s someone in still greater danger, father. For God’s sake, help us to save her — some one shut up yonder, in a room at that end of the house.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 523
